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How Bush Stayed True to Conservatism

May 15, 2007 5:49 pmMay 15, 2007 5:49 pm

For years now, Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, has been generating admiring news stories by publicly distancing himself from the Bush administration. Sunday morning he did it again by inching still further away from the hapless president.

Appearing on “Face the Nation” on CBS, Hagel said he was “not happy with the Republican party today. It has drifted from the party of Eisenhower, of Goldwater, of Reagan, the party that I joined. It isn’t the same party. It’s been hijacked by a group of single-minded, almost isolationist insulationists, power-projectors. That’s not what Eisenhower talked about.”

If interpreted as throat-clearing before an independent presidential candidacy, Hagel’s comments make sense. But as the core of an independent analysis of conservatism today, they’re nonsense.
Hagel’s profession of unhappiness with today’s G.O.P. is not unique. Ever since the Iraq war turned sour and President Bush’s standing declined, a parade of right-wingers — journalists and intellectuals, activists and politicians — have asserted that this administration embodies neither true conservatism nor the real spirit of the Republican party. Yet these claims crumble under scrutiny, because, far from a subversion of modern American conservatism, Bush represents its fulfillment.

The dives that conservatives take as they jump off the foundering U.S.S. Bush are of a few different types. One strategy is to hearken back to some great conservative thinker — say, Edmund Burke or Adam Smith, or even someone more recent like Friedrich Hayek — and demonstrate how this seminal philosopher would be appalled by the size of the federal government under Bush or the hubris behind the Iraq war.

But expecting Bush to govern as if he’d read “Reflections on the Revolution in France” is unfair — and not just because he once named as his favorite book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.” It’s senseless to measure any president against a philosophical tract. For starters, the works that purists cite are typically products of an earlier day, and therefore apply only tangentially to today’s debates. (Burke, for example, championed the superiority of the propertied classes — an untenable position in American politics for the last 150 years.) Even contemporary treatises deal with current issues at a sufficiently abstract or idealized level as to disqualify them as governing blueprints.

If anti-Bush Republicans don’t accuse the president of betraying their favorite thinkers, they often say he’s forsaken a core conservative principle such as “tradition,” “humility” or “small government” — or, more vapidly, “adherence to the Constitution,” “the wisdom of the Founders” or “honesty in government.” The problem is that these general concepts — especially when proffered without much elaboration — are so elastic as to encompass any grounds for disowning a failed course of action. If you don’t like Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” education program, for example, blame it on the policy’s abandonment of small government (a conservative ideal) and ignore its reversion to old-fashioned learning methods (which is also a conservative ideal).

A third strategy for the discontented is the one Hagel pursued Sunday: invoking beloved G.O.P. leaders of yesteryear—in his case, dating to Dwight Eisenhower. But Hagel’s history here is confused. As president, Eisenhower championed “modern Republicanism,” which made peace with the New Deal, modifying rather than rolling back the welfare state. It was this rapprochement with liberalism that angered an ideologically extreme band of activists, who turned first to Goldwater (unsuccessfully) and then to Reagan (successfully) to transform their movement into a winning electoral coalition.

But even conservatives who stipulate Reagan, not Ike, as their beau ideal — which, as the last debate among G.O.P. White House aspirants suggests, includes almost all of them — are reading history selectively. Rhetorically, Reagan certainly hewed to the stance of small government, low taxes and an aggressive military that has inspired his followers since. But in practice he frequently deviated from his line when politics dictated — or when, inevitably, different conservative ideals clashed.

The examples are many. Reagan’s skyrocketing budget deficits and multiple tax hikes violated the right’s notions of political economy as surely as any of Bush’s actions. His wars on drugs and pornography gave rise to intrusions on individual liberties similar to those that some libertarians now decry. Reagan’s foreign policy, notably in Central America, shared with Bush’s the assumption that America had to project more, not less, might around the globe. If Bush has abjured true conservative values, so did Reagan.

Republicans who grouse about Bush are forgetting two basic facts about American politics. The first is that in our two-party system, any majority party has to include factions that disagree on key points. Since the 1950s, the G.O.P. has brought together unlikely allies and allowed them to co-exist — big business together with the religious right, isolationists alongside militarists, virtuecrats next to libertarians. Certain policies, such as tax cutting and anticommunism, glued them together, but under every Republican administration — Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, Reagan and George Bush Sr.— each group also had to swallow some pet items for the sake of unity.

The second key fact was summed up more than 40 years ago by the public opinion analysts Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril: that Americans are rhetorically conservative but operationally liberal. We like the Republicans’ talk about small government, low taxes and military strength, but we also like our Social Security benefits, our federal help when disasters strike, and even our earmarks (at least when they’re our earmarks). It’s therefore impossible in practice for any Republican leader to truly govern according to a Heritage Foundation blueprint.

Still, if any president has tried to implement conservative ideals, it’s Bush. Before Reagan, the so-called conservative movement had been an insurgent force within the Republican party. But starting in the 1980s, most of the liberals in the party left it, and for the last 10 or 20 years, the party and the movement have been more or less congruent. From 2002 to 2007, moreover, the G.O.P. controlled not just the White House but both houses of Congress, the federal judiciary and a majority of state governments, as well as more media outlets than ever before. They were thus able to impose a conservative agenda with little resistance.

Indeed, so few were the obstacles that conservatism was able to run amok. The result — in the assessment of not just liberals but also other observers — has been disaster: a mess of a war, the failure to plan for Hurricane Katrina, the erosion of the church-state wall, widening inequality, the loss of civil liberties including habeas corpus, and scores of other ills that readers of this column can list as easily as I. This was the fruit of modern American conservatism.

But now Republicans are deserting Bush. Businessmen and evangelicals, libertarians and social moderates are all astir. The reason isn’t that Bush failed to espouse their causes any more than Reagan did. From the Iraq War on down, after all, his policies have also been their policies — backed by their legislators, upheld by their judges, championed by their journalists.

No, the reason so many are complaining about Bush or today’s G.O.P. is that their policies haven’t worked out very well. Since the 2004 election, majorities of Americans have turned against them. What conservatives like Chuck Hagel and Bush’s other right-wing detractors fear in their bones — and not without reason — is that majorities of Americans will soon also turn against the creed of conservatism itself.

Greenberg writes that the charge against Bush regarding “adherence to the Constitution” or “honesty in government” is vapid. Where is your evidence, Mr. Greenberg, because there is a mountain of evidence regarding both the unConstitutionality of some of Bush’s policies — e.g. illegal wiretaps deemed unconstitutional by federal judge in Aug. 2006 — as well as daily evidence (see: Alberto Gonzales, as but a single example) of dishonesty in so-called governance. There is nothing “vapid” about these charges. However, on the larger question, I agree with Greenberg — conservatism has now, finally, shown itself to be the utterly bankrupt ideology it always was. Bush will be instrumental in putting a Democratic government in place for a generation, just like Herbert Hoover did.

There is a misprint, in the paragraph that starts “Still, if any president…” (it must be a mispint). It should read, “As if any president—or any politician for that matter—has ever tried to implement conservative ideals. FULL STOP The diagnosis is easy. When Republications are in the minority, (in congress or lacking the presidency) they view any money, that the government takes away in taxes, as Their Money, and they try to keep the government, from spending Their Money, on anything that they don’t like—I mean, it’s Their Money! Thus they act as a brake on spending, keeping the majority Democrats honest—well honest as politicians get.

However, when the Republicans are in the majority, (in congress and/or holding the presidency) they still think that the monies taken in are Their Money. And they’ll be damned if their going to spend it on any idea or person that they don’t like. Unfortunately, even if there are few ideas that they like, there are a whole lot of people that they like—mostly campaign contributors and other cronies. This gives rise to the conservatives “running amok”. Amok, amok, amok. It’s a fun word to say, sort of like smock (name the source of this cultural reference). I like it as much as rednecks, and other conservatives who write Letters to the Editor, seem to like the word “ilk”. I have a list of “Never trust anyone who…”. Uses the work “ilk” is one. Uses “ “s too much is another.

My Uncle used to blame Reagan’s exponential increase, in government spending, on the Democratic congress. I never trusted Reagan after he said that he was going to cut taxes, build a 200 ship navy, and balance the budget—a campaign promise of his, I believe (or didn’t believe, whichever). After seeing how the Bush administration, combined with a Republican congress, has done even worse, and been deceitful about its accounting practices to boot, I hope that kind of ‘blame it on the tax and spend Democrats’ has been discredited. Sure Democrats tax and spend: Republicans just spend.

In the 2000 elections, Bush’s compassionate conservatism was appealing to the American public, because, gosh darn it, we like to help other people, but our Protestant Cultural upbringing makes us hate to waste money. Read Ben Franklin’s bon mots and you will see these origins—well, at least the parts about money. The other flavor that appeals, to Americans, is the fiscally conservative Democrat, which for all his personal faults, Pres. Clinton (the 1st , and only as of this writing) was. You’ll have to forgive me and my innate “Truth O Meter” (stupid quotation marks again, arrrgghh), but I didn’t believe Bush any more than I believed Reagan.

Where to go from here? The Republicans believe, in ruling from the top down. To borrow the “People are Atoms” idea, I liken the Republican approach to trying to balance a heavy weight (the power of government) on the top of a broom stick (the disenfranchised populace). It is not very stable. (It is also the organization, of conservative governments, in Latin America, but that is a different rant.) The Democrats, in theory at least, are more like a pyramid: A broad base (the people) supporting a government that serves them (the people). Look I said “in theory”, okay? So step up and place your bets. You can’t win if you don’t play. But judging by the last 6 or 7 years, you can sure lose. bc

Most conservative American politicians do what Limbaugh advised: use liberal methods to promote conservative values, leading to an incongruence. 1 Budget deficits a or increased taxation to finanace new programs making only token spending cuts. 2 Talking unity and privatization while demanding loyalty from Congress, lawyers, judges, and contractors. 3 Ex governmental employees becoming millionaires in the private sector. 4 Use war to demand unconstitutional powers, consensus, and nationalism. 5 Pre-empt liberal reform like education and medicine benefits. (Clinton pre-empted welfare reform.)
Eisenhower’s conservatism in avoiding reform lead to the radicalism of the 60s, and Reagan’s consevatism was reaction to that radicalism (Reagan was a Democrat til he was 50 when “the party deserted me.”) Bush shows that you can still champion the propertied classes if you talk populist. Gore and Kerry should have called themselves conservative liberals, which is what the Clintons are. National health insurance would have passed if Hillary had not appeased the insurance industry, which is the problem with a 20% overhead adding 100 billion a year.
Liberalism and conservatism are appealing in theory and culture, but difficult to keep pure with abusing citizens and institutions.

Bush’s many failures blur the critical distinction between ideology and competence. You imply that presidents must respect the realities of life in their times above abstract philosophical tenets. This position obscures the primacy of competent governing: attracting and guiding the best people to run a department or program, inspiring them to execute on a coherent vision. Perhaps many are disgusted with incompetence, rather than disillusioned by ideological impurity. Perhaps Bush’s failures emanate from his poor management rather than from some inevitable consequence of ideology.

It’s fair to say the definition of conservatisim is changing to fit the current political climate. Reagan started this process and W is finishing it.
It will be interesting to see how the word gets changed for public consumption in the upcoming election. What policys will be worthy of the word and what won’t?
Interesting stuff and it is important to separate the word from the policies.

As long as greed runs the conservative movement, and hypocrisy abounds, we are in trouble. While the religious right preaches creationism, they let social darwinism govern them. The deal between the mertitocracy/hedge-fund set, and the Christian clerics was so like the Saudi Princes and their Taliban as to be frightening.
Bush and Conservatism, the deal with the Devil, connected small-minded zealotry with business-as-usual Washington insiders. Highmindedness met cronyism, the result, a level of corruption that has undermined democracy at home and abroad. It is interesting that Jerry Falwell’s death has allowed conservatives even more “cherrypicking” of history, claiming the Reverend’s coup of electing Ronald Reagan, while avoiding his role in the Bush ascendancy. As long as evangelical Christianity believes it can undo the Separation of Church and State, then that part of the broad brush of conservatism will remain. Extricating the foxes in the henhouse will take time, and conservatives loyal to Mr. Bush are everywhere. They are in government, the judiciary, and leading the military. Unrestricted access to immense wealth and religious isolationism seem strange bedfellows, but they have been a potent political force. Eisenhower was only able to warn us against the military-industrial complex, believing the constitutional separations sufficient to protect us from religious regressionism. He was shortsighted. It can and has happened here.

William Grieder’s 2003 essay “Rolling Back the Twentieth Century” is still valid. Bush is the manifestation of the kind of conservativism that dominated American politics in the late 19th Century, when the plutocrats like Morgan and Rockefeller, dominated national legislature, judicary, and newspapers, while the interests of ordinary Americans were largely ignored. The Progressive and New Deal era corrections were anathema to these conservatives, and have been their principal targets. Hence “Rolling Back the Twentieth Century”.
The dramatic increase in economic inequality between most of us and the top 1%, as well as reductions in government protections and aid to ordinary Americans since 1980, are measures of their success. Bush has done his part for this, the truest, brand of American Conservatism.

The first thing a conservatve should want to conserve is the Constitution; Mr. Bush has worked diligently to subvert it. The Preamble to the Constitution says that “We, the people” seek to “promote the general welfare”; Mr. Bush has promoted the private welfare of the top one percent at the expense of most everyone else; that is by definition radical. Mr. Bush has repeatedly appointed to regulatory posts men and women who have dedicated their professional careers to defeating the very laws and regulations that upon taking office they swear, often perjuriously, it turns out, to enforce; that’s corrupt, not conservative. In doing such things, what is it, at bottom, other than his own power, and that of those who finance him and his political party, that Mr. Bush seeks to conserve?

I respectfully disagree. Perhaps the conservatism I embrace is odd, being a child of the Northeast, but I am Conservative and George Bush’s policies seem to be exactly what I do NOT stand for.

First, President Bush is pushing to legalize people who snuck into this country. This is unfair to others who are waiting to legally enter our country. I think when people talk about sending illegal immigrants back, they ignore the fact that they came here on their own and will leave on their own if they don’t find work and don’t receive benefits for themselves or their children. Their presence here is, of course, a big boon to BIG BUSINESS. Which brings me to the next place Mr. Bush has betrayed my Conservative American roots.

Second, President Bush has grown what Eisenhower presciently identified as the “Military Industrial Complex.” As wealth accumulates in the hands of the few and those few become owners of multinational corporations (some privatised) the America as we know it slowly disappears and de facto corporate governments emerg with power, wealth and control. In this regard, Fast-Track legislation enabling quasi-governmental multi-national institutions like NAFTA, CAFTA, etc. are slowly stepping into a governmental role. Government by Big International Business is not a GOP idea. Yes, this process has\involved members of both parties, but Bush has moved the process along.

Third, as a Conservative, I believe in less government interference and “strict constructionism” – a mush abused phrase. That phrase really refers to using the principles of our Constitution without expansion. So take a look at the Bill of Rights and ask yourself if Mr. Bush’s Patriot Act has remained faithful to any rational strict construction of its words or precepts.

As a Conservative, I have never spent money I don’t have. So when our president allows our country to borrow, borrow, borrow and print currency, he has devalued our dollar and has evidenced a true disregard for the value of those of use who have worked and saved for a lifetime. He is eroding our currency and our personal wealth.
He has taken us from wealth to unthinkable debt in less than a decade. It’s breathtaking!

I realize this list could go on and on. Our President is not my kind of Conservative and I don’t think he’s any kind of Conservative at all. Or, maybe I’m not,

To paint Bush as a doctrinaire conservative is to avoid the more important point of the last six disastrous years.
Unfettered cronyism, criminal incompetence, distorting or ignoring the law in the name of expediency – these are neither conservative nor liberal. They are just bad government.

I don’t really care what you call it. Give it a name and put it on the dust bin of history. I voted for Richard Nixon at one point. I don’t recall conservativism supporting wild spending, wars for fun, trampling on the Constitution, torture, spying on Americans illegally, violating international law and laws of our country. Sure sounds more like the Neocon philosophy on the steriods provided by the religious right to me.

good points, but i have one quibble. “widening inequality” is not a result of conservative policies but of unchecked capitalism. the trend has been consistent, under both republicans and democrats, for the last generation.

let’s also not forget that democrats have proven themselves just as willing to kill foreigners as republicans. clinton, for instance, maintained the brutal sanctions against iraq which killed 1 million people. and that was only his greatest crime – he also repeatedly sent weapons to state terrorists in turkey, indonesia, and colombia, among others.

Liberal, conservative, whatever. What I am truly craving in a presidential candidate is someone who can run the government for the benefit of the entire country without much regard to party lines. I want to vote with someone with a streak of independence and some street smarts who is also willing to take advice from people who know something. Some respect for our laws and traditions would be great as well. I guess that means I’m looking for the anti-Bush…

Unfortunately, the folks in the current lineup for both parties are too scripted and pander too much to know what their true qualities are. I am not pleased with any of them. Bring on Bloomberg!

I would be OK with the idea that Bush’s incompetence and fraud created the final undoing of a bankrupt political union (big business, tax cheap skates and religion) except for the fact that too many people have to die before modern Republicanism does.

Talk about giving your life for a cause. What if our soldiers are dying so WE can have a better government?

I think Greenberg’s analysis is very solid here. Bruce Crossan, also has a very valid point about the difference in theory between the parties– one being top-down and the other bottom-up. I think that top-downitis probably is very common among Washington insiders, regardless of party. There is just too many spoils that come from a privileged position in the political hierarchy. I think that the arrogance of power that comes from this is a threat to the legitimacy of both political parties. Both governing philosophies were repudiated in the 2006 midterm elections. If Democrats want to forge a new governing philosophy– one that is dedicated to the development of the talents of all its citizens– it will need to take citizen development much more seriously than the prevailing top-down view of Washington insiders. Opportunities for public service and democratic input into public policies need to be expanded as well as opportunities for holding public office (perhaps on the basis of a citizen lottery). Jean Lipman-Blumen of the Claremont Graduate School in a brilliant book on The Allure of Toxic Leaders elaborates on the latter. While John Dean in a complementary way describes the dangers of authoritarian leaders and followers in his book Conservatives Without Conscience. The two phenomena are inter-related– a passive, authoritarian citizenry is an invitation to political demagoguery and Orwellian zero-sum governing techniques. Sound familiar?

Greenberg’s premise and conclusions are laughable. Conservatives have long been wary of George Bush.

William Buckley, 7/26/06 —

“I think Mr. Bush faces a singular problem best defined, I think, as the absence of effective conservative ideology — with the result that he ended up being very extravagant in domestic spending, extremely tolerant of excesses by Congress. And in respect of foreign policy, incapable of bringing together such forces as apparently were necessary to conclude the Iraq challenge.”

Captain Ed 2/25/06 —

“The traditional conservative position reached its most potent expression in the policies of Brent Scowcroft, the last bastion of realpolitik in government. Conservatives for decades fought against foreign entanglements and the liberation of people from tyranny for its own sake, only espousing military intervention when clear and short-term American economic or strategic interests came under threat. Buckley and Scowcroft would never have suggested that the US depose Saddam Hussein, mostly because they would not have thought that the oppression and genocide of Iraqis was worth the expense and headache of liberation.”

I don’t buy this argument. While there is a spectrum within a broadly defined “conservatism,” including civil libertarians and classical liberals etc., W has shown few qualities consistent with any of them other than a form of “Christian conservatism,” which seeks to promote a moral, social philosophy through politics. It is not a true political ideology. Those who criticise Bush, and the Republican party as a whole, as abandoning conservatism are right on.